A newly published research study shows the benefits of smoking cannabis for spasticity in multiple sclerosis. Using 30 adult patients with multiple sclerosis, the researchers found that smoked cannabis was superior to a placebo in reducing symptoms and pain in patients with treatment-resistant spasticity, or excessive muscle contractions. A clinical study of 30 adult patients [...]

Many people know that soda and sweets aren’t a healthy choice of food, but did you know that a diet steadily high in fructose slows the brain, hampering memory and learning? This news comes from a study at UCLA where a team zeroed in on high-fructose corn syrup, something the average American consumes more than [...]

Yale researchers have identified the source of neuropathic pain that many diabetics suffer from and believe they may be able to target it. While working with rats, the researchers found that changes in the structure of dendritic spines are associated with pain and they also found a drug that interferes with formation of these spines, [...]

Neuroscientists from UCLA have developed a system to measure communication between stem cell–derived motor neurons and muscle cells in a Petri dish. They hope that they can use this method to better understand neurodegenerative diseases and to explore what happens in the early stages of motor neuron disease. In an effort to identify the underlying [...]

Robots may to be moving from the assembly line to neurosurgery before you know it. Using a robotic arm guided by a cell-detecting computer algorithm, scientists at Georgia Tech and MIT have developed a method to identify and record neurons in a living mouse brain with better accuracy and speed than a human. Gaining access [...]

A new vaccine has been found to extend the life of patients suffering from recurrent glioblastoma multiforme. A phase 2 clinical trial showed that by using material from the patient’s own tumor, neurologists were able to tailor a vaccine that could extend survival when compared to standard therapy techniques. A new brain cancer vaccine tailored [...]

Experiments show that scouting bees, much like novelty-seeking humans, have differences in brain activity in genes related to dopamine and glutamate signaling between neurons. Genomic analysis of the bees revealed significant differences between scouts and non-scouts in the abundance of specific mRNAs and researchers were able to increase and decrease the bees scouting tendencies by [...]

Neurologists just took another step forward in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease. While study mice, they discovered that the antibodies that block the function of Dkk1, are also able to completely suppress the toxic effect of Amyloid-ß on synapses. Antibodies that block the process of synapse disintegration in Alzheimer’s disease have been identified, raising hopes [...]

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory are studying how alcohol consumption affects brain volume. Their recently published research on mice shows that significant quantities of alcohol can cause serious shrinkage in some brain regions when lacking dopamine D2 receptors and that DRD2 may play a protective role against alcohol-induced brain damage. [...]

Researchers at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) believe they have found a way to help the brain replace damaged oligodendrocytes and myelin. By using a system of gene therapy they developed, which uses leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF), the researchers were able to stimulate production of new oligodendrocytes from stem and progenitor cells. PASADENA, California — [...]

Researchers at UCLA are using a positron emission tomography (PET) brain scan in conjunction with chemical marker they created, called FDDNP, to pinpoint where in the brain abnormal protein deposits are accumulating. The FDDNP–PET scanning is the only available brain-imaging technique that can assess tau tangles, which correlate with Alzheimer’s disease progression much better than [...]

A team of neuroscientists at the School of Medicine at UCLA have demonstrated that they can strengthen memory in human patients by stimulating the entorhinal cortex. While studying patients with electrodes implanted in their brains, the researchers used a video game to test whether deep-brain stimulation of the entorhinal cortex or the hippocampus altered recall. [...]